So the ACORN videos are crossing over to CNN and the Daily Show (h/t: Conor). At this point, it seems rather hard to deny that there’s something wrong with ACORN. By appearances, it looks like there’s a whole lot wrong. The conservative blogs and FOX News put the videos in a narrative where ACORN is bottom-to-top an organization of corrupt thugs. I’m not yet convinced, which is not to say that I want to defend ACORN. I’d just like to see someone dig a little deeper.
For example, we see that ACORN staffers in at least four cities are willing to keep talking to people who make requests that are increasingly morally horrifying. Why are they doing this? Do they help people set up criminal enterprises on a regular basis? Or is it that they’re they willing to say what they have to say to get people to join ACORN? What do people who live near ACORN offices in New York or Baltimore say about the organization? John Fund at the Wall Street Journal is working to provide some of this context. He’s talked to former ACORN board members, he knows when and where ACORN’s run into legal challenges of its voter registration drives, and he’s aware that Democrats have also called for hearings on ACORN. (He gives the example of John Conyers, from Michigan, who made his complaints last March.)
You know, comparing Fund’s work to what’s posted on Big Government gives an interesting old/new media perspective to this whole thing. Fund has been tracking and criticizing ACORN for years as part of his writing on election fraud. He’s got sources and can put his argument in perspective. Big Government has the hot videos and can get ahold of all sorts of documents, but they don’t pull it into a narrative that can convince me that they know much more than I do about how ACORN works from the inside.
This is, I guess, why I’m relieved that this story is moving out of the conservative media landscape. It deserves treatment by people who aspire to objectivity (though I think I’d put Fund in this category), and want more out of the story than a way to attack Obama.
Why is ACORN even relevant, other than as a bogeyman in an Obama-was-fraudulently-elected conspiracy theory?Report
Government Funding.Report
It’s also an Obama’s-shady-past bogeyman, since he apparently worked cases for ACORN in Chicago.
I guess the reason I want some good reporters to look into the story is because I’m not sure how big the problems are, how much funding they get from the government and for what, or what the relevance to my life might be, if there is any.Report
$53 million-with-an-M over fifteen years.Report
The only thing I really have to say about this is that the two people in Baltimore were either just fooling around (which should still be a firing offense given criticism of their organization) or they’re the two stupidest people in Baltimore. Odds of those two being mistaken for actual sex workers in Baltimore by anyone other than Johns Hopkins freshman: zero.Report
Yeah, I’m with you there. It’s just — you’d think they’d stop fooling around after a certain point… but they just keep going. It’s weird.Report
Quick thought – it occurs to me that this story would have gained more traction sooner if movement outlets hadn’t been howling about Cass Sunstein and other ridiculous subjects for the past month or two. Crying wolf has its downsides.Report
Also if they hadn’t already demonized ACORN before they had the goods, making the (ill-gotten) goods irrelevant when they finally got their hands on them, because no one’s listening to what they Right has to say about ACORN at this point anyway, since they’ve sounded unhinged on the subject for most of a year now.Report
Wasn’t His Magnificence some sort of official or trainer or lawyer, mouth-piece for ACORN? Does anyone know if he’s involved in any of the corruption? How much did the commie-dems allocate in the ‘stimulus’ bill for ACORN. Should the commie-dems be impeached if they knew that ACORN is corrupt?Report
In order: lawyer, I don’t know, I don’t know, if they knew of specific illegal activities their constituents should vote them out.
(In my opinion, Mr. Cheeks, “His Magnificence” and “commie-dems” aren’t helpful phrases. They make it harder for me to have a conversation. Just saying.)Report
William, thank you for your kind response. Re: my less than helpful phrases, I do apologize, but I do love to come here and vent/rant, it helps the digestion. In the future I’ll leave my smart assed comments for E.D. who I love as a son and Freddie who is sensitive, concerned, and a damn good Democrat.Report
Obama was a junior attorney at a law firm representing a client and ACORN in a case against Citibank in chicago over redlining.Report
Yes. We should impeach Obama over his ties to ACORN. Meanwhile, the warrantless spying and torture ordered by the former President should be applauded.
This world makes no sense to me.Report
Surely a happier outcome would be dismissing all ties (if any exist at all) and merely continuing the policies of warrantless spying and torture.Report
I’d say we’re way past making excuses for ACORN at this point. Writing this off as people just “playing around” won’t do anybody any good. I don’t buy it. And there’s footage from several ACORN offices, regardless.
Great post, William. I think you’re right – this does deserve the scrutiny of real, practiced journalists who can frame this in a larger narrative. And Jon Stewart is also right – where the hell were they?
(Will – also a good point. Unintended consequences of silly behavior, I guess…)Report
Speaking as someone who has had very close friends work for them last year…all of this really bothers me.
That said, if someone offered to pay you to do something you wanted to do anyway (like help people register to vote), wouldn’t you take it? Especially if you were a poor student?Report
Media matters (consider the source) is saying that Fox may have been punked by Acorn. If that is the case, and they were really just catching Fox in a smear, then it would make sense to me as to why they kept going with the joke. When I heard the tape on John Stewart I found it pretty astonishing myself.Report
I think it was just the last video that was supposed to be a punking, where the woman told a story about killing her husband. The ex-husband in question so far appears to be alive.Report
Ya lost my ‘comment,’ never happened here before!
Anyway, does anyone know Obama’s specific connection to this criminal organization?
Does this mean The Enlightened One will be impeached for carousing with a criminal organization?
How much money did the Commie-Dems give ACORN in the stimulus bill?
Do you guys think ACORN should be prosecuted, or should it just go away? I here the stoopid Republicrats knew of this business via the banking system. Why didn’t the mainstream media investigate this criminal/political enterprise? Glenn Beck, entertainer, is a better journalist than the entire NBC staff.Report
I can still see your earlier ‘comment.’Report
Thanks, again! All cleared up. See you secularists, there is a God!Report
While I agree that investigations and scrutiny are necessary at this point, I think its unfair to claim the media “dropped the ball” on this particular scandal. Why on earth would any media outlet suspect that ACORN of helping prostitutes and pimps cheat on their tax forms? There was no prior evidence of that happening that would justify an in-depth investigation. Also, consider the video’s author’s main reason for the prank on ACORN was to “Expose Liberal hypocrisy” (his words). This was not investigative journalism; though they definitely struck gold.Report
I didn’t mean to claim that the media dropped the ball, even though that’s what John Stewart said. It seems like the story crossed over at about the right time, once it was clear that there were several videos and not just an isolated fluke. The difference between what O’Keefe did and what I consider to be professional journalism was part of what I was trying to get at towards the end of the post.Report
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/17/acorn_hysteria/index.htmlReport
Good link.Report
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/09/18/acorn/index.html
There’s another. (Incidentally, I don’t spend all my time at Salon — in fact I’m not much of a fan. But I do tend to keep an eye on both those writers, which in the case of Greenwald is of course basically a given for anyone who spends much time at all on the political internets.)Report